Talk:List of unusual units of measurement/Candidates

The following are candidates for List of unusual units of measurement, but are left here because they are believed not to fulfill the Wikipedia criteria for notability. Only if sufficient documentation and references can be found, can they be moved into the main article.

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Conventional

Distance

An old unit of measurement, with a strange definition. It is defined as; 1 distance := 3 miles + 3 furlongs + 9 chains + 3 poles + 9 feet + 9 shaftments + 9 hands + 9 barleycorns: = 221,763 inches = 5,632.7802 meters.

Rods to the Hogshead

Both of these measures are antiquated units of measure, rods for distance, hogshead for volume (of alcohol). A Hogshead is different for wine and for beer. See made-up words in The Simpsons.

Rods to the hogshead would appear to correlate to miles per gallon (conversion factor: MPG × 20160 = rods to the hogshead).

Also, 1 mile per gallon = 1 furlong per pint.

Economic Happiness

In the early to mid 20th century, the fashionable length of a miniskirt was an informal way of gauging economic security felt by a population in general. The higher the skirt the better people felt the economy was doing. I don't have any metrics on this.

Fish-specific units of measurement

I'm not sure if this unit of measurement is applicable, as it's both obscure and obsolete:

Cran - A unit of volume specifically for herring. It has most recently been defined as 45 British wine gallons (UK) or 42 British wine gallons (US). More can be found on sizes.com's article.

--Adamrush 17:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Volume: Pack of cigarettes

The size of a pack of cigarettes is a unit of volume in the USA. This unit is commonly used to suggest smallness (VHS-C tapes, video surveillance cameras), but suggests largeness in the statement "Joe Blow choked on a piece of steak the size of a pack of cigarettes." A similar unit is the size of a deck of cards.

issues: Uncited, and usage along the lines of "That is 5 packs of ciggarettes" was not suggested in the article. Rhialto 22:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a serious unit. I thought of, but did not list, two of my favorite frivolous units: smoot and standard eileen

I'm not going to fight with you on this. If you think this is your page, then it's your page. I'll just cite The Truth As Revealed To Me, and you can deal with your page as you will. This unit was quite common forty years ago, but with the unpopularity of cigarettes, the term has declined. Still, it's widely used. Here are some AltaVista hit counts:

26,300 -- size of a pack of cigarettes

254 -- half the size of a pack of cigarettes

25 -- twice the size of a pack of cigarettes

16 -- the size of three packs of cigarettes

13 -- the size of 3 packs of cigarettes

-- Randall Bart 21:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Those ratios prove my point quite well about it being an expression rather than a true unit. Even the second most common value is less than 1/100 as common as the first value. Still, if you can get a general consensus for moving it into the article, by all means. Rhialto 21:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Short distance: Hairsbreadth

The thickness of a hair —or more often, specifically "The thickness of a human hair"— generally meaning a distance that's almost but not quite too small to see. The specificity of a human hair is curious since there is no evidence that hair from other mammalian species is any less reliable as a unit of measurement. Webster's Dictionary defines a hairsbreadth as exactly 1/48th inch (0.53 mm) which is curious since the thickness of an actual human hair varies from 1/140th inch (0.18 mm) to 1/1400th inch (0.018 mm) depending on the genetics of the donor, the colour of the hair and from what part of the body the hair was taken. Due to this large range of interpretations, statements such as "half the thickness of a human hair" should be viewed with appropriate skepticism.

issues: Usage along the lines of "That is 5 hair thicknesses" was not suggested in the article or checkable cites. Rhialto 22:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Length: stone's throw/spitting distance

A stone's throw is a measure of distance that can be traced back to the first century (see Luke 22:41 in the Bible), that is used to this day as a very approximate measure. No accurate definition exists, although it is sometimes seen equalled to 25 fathoms (46 m). In most cases "bare et stenkast væk" (Danish, meaning: just one stone's throw away) is taken to mean "quite nearby". Spitting distance is another similar, self-explanatory measurement of distance.

A stone's throw is often used by estate agents when describing the location of a house. Their concept is usually different, and in actuality can describe much larger distances.

not a unit of measurement, as people never refer to 4 stones' throws or 2 spitting distances Rhialto 07:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Pleasure: hedon

This is a term that utilitarians use to designate a unit of pleasure used in ethical mathematics. Its opposite is a dolor, which is a unit of pain or displeasure. The term "hedon" comes from the Greek word for pleasure. [1]

Issues - A search for <<hedon -wikipedia -"town council" -yorkshire>> yielded 406,000 hits, only one in the first 50 was relevant (noted above). A search with the above criteria plus "two hedons" yielded no hits. This unit does not appear to be sufficiently notable yet. Rhialto 02:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Vodka index

The Vodka index is the relation between the price of a liter of standard vodka, and the mean price of a hardbound book in a particular country. While somewhat jocular, it is purported to evince how well literacy fares in a given country. Among its many proponents are included Al Alvarez and science fiction author Harry Harrison.

Food: Kelbert

A Kelbert is the unit of food which one consumes to quell ones hunger without being overly full. People who usually eat many small meals during the day instead of the normal 3 meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) subscribe to the Kelbert method of eating.

Cubic Acre

Defined as acre^1.5 (rather than the acre³ one might normally assume.) 257440.4 m³. [Can anyone find any usage of this _other_ than for Scrooge McDuck's money bin?

Motor Engine efficiency: Miles per litre

A very useful hybrid measurement for the UK, which unfortunately is not used, since distances are measured in miles but fuel (petrol or diesel) is bought in litres.

Historical units

Units that are strange because they are historical are best placed in a separate article of their own, or grouped in a separate article. There are so many historical units that including them here would make the page impossibly long.

Last

The last is an ancient northern European unit used in measuring large quantities, either by mass or volume or both. "Last" is the German word for "load," a meaning which also survives in the English word "ballast." Generally the last is approximately 4000 pounds (about 1800 kilograms) as a mass unit or 80 bushels (about 3 cubic meters) as a volume unit. In the U.S., a last of wool was formerly 12 sacks at 364 pounds per sack, or 4368 pounds (1981.3 kilograms). In the Netherlands, the last is a metric unit of volume equal to exactly 3 cubic meters. In Germany, where the last was previously a volume unit equal to 2.819 cubic meters, it's also a metric unit of mass equal to 2 metric tons (about 4409 pounds). In Britain, a Riga last of timber is 80 cubic feet (2.265 cubic meters) of square-sawn timber.

Foreign units

The following entries have been moved here as a holding area. They can only be considered strange in that their usage is almost exclusively non-anglophone. As such, they are only strange because they are foreign. Allowing units in because they are foreign would invite a merger of every page that lists foreign units, making the page impossibly large. These units would most usefully be merged with a page on that specific country's weights and measures, merged with an existing article on that specific unit, or used as the base of an entirely new page. Rhialto 02:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

mass: decagram, hectogram

• In some parts of central Europe decagrams are used in cooking and food retail. In Austria the unit is simply referred to as Deka.
• The hectogram is in common use in Italy, especially in cooking and in the retail sale of meat. It is usually referred to as "etto" (shortened form of "ettogrammo").

velocity: Seemeilen/Woche

Seemeile pro Woche, German for a nautical mile (NM) per week (wk). 1 NM/wk equals 1852/(7·24·60·60) m/s or about 3 mm/s, said to be the nominal value for a snail's pace.

Length: Peninkulma

Possibly from peninkuulema, this was defined as the maximum distance over which you can hear a dog bark. It was originally about 5 km, but in 1655, it was standardized to be equivalent to the Swedish mil, or 10688 m.

Length: Poronkusema

Poronkusema (literally: a reindeer piss) is a measurement of distance originating in Northern Finland. It is the distance traveled in a reindeer pulled sleigh, between two instances of reindeer urinating. This distance is 7.5–10 km. Poronkusemaa kuukaudessa (poronkusemas per month) is Finnish equivalent for furlongs per fortnight or Seemeilen pro Woche. Taken for poronkusema the value of 7500 m, and for month 30 d, poronkusemaa kuukaudessa becomes 0.0289252 m/s.

Area: Dunam

In Israel and some other Middle Eastern countries, the dunam (דונם) is the standard unit of land area, defined as 1000 m².

Cubic Volume: hehto

A unit used in Finland is hehto (hectolitre, 100 litres), for measuring the amount of grains, potatoes or such.

Cubic Volume: Motti

The Finnish term for one cubic metre is motti, "a bound pile of wood", because firewood is usually piled up in cubes one metre on each side. This unit is used only in measuring firewood; Americans use the rather bigger cord which is about 3.62 m³. The term has also gained a meaning in military slang.

Time: Cigarette

Until recently, marching pauses in the Finnish army might be sometimes measured as "cigarette-long break". This tradition has been discontinued because of the health-hazards in smoking.

It is sometimes used colloquially in Spain as a measure of time equivalent to the time needed to smoke a cigarette during a coffee break. It is roughly equivalent to 5-7 minutes.

Quantity of alcohol: Koskenkorva bottle

In Finland, the standard yardstick for large amounts of alcohol is the Koskenkorva bottle, 0.5 litres at 38%, which works out to be 0.19 litres of pure alcohol. Incidentally, the average yearly consumption of alcohol in Finland, which is about 10 litres per capita, is also 52 Koskenkorva bottles or exactly one Koskenkorva bottle per week.

For example, in an official release of the Finnish Customs: The amount of confiscated alcohol corresponds to 51 000 half-litre Koskenkorva bottles --

Distance: mil

A mil in Norway and Sweden (and occasionally in Swedish-speaking Finland) is a distance of 10 kilometres. The term originates from a pre-metric mil (in earlier times rast) of slightly over 10 km, denoting a suitable distance between rests when walking. It was complemented by a smaller unit, the currently obsolete skogsmil (English: forest mile), which was roughly 5 km. The metric mil was officially established in Sweden on 1 January 1889. For geographical distances the term is probably used more than the kilometre. It is also used commonly for measuring vehicle fuel consumption, litres per mil means litres consumed per 10 km. Confusingly, however, the mil is also a much smaller unit equal to one-thousandth of an inch and an angular unit of measure.